


Through The Trap Door

by authorette



Series: Seen And Unforseen: The Vanity Harry Potter AU Series [2]
Category: Emmerdale
Genre: 5 plus 1, Another Vanity Harry Potter AU, F/F, because I’m hitting all the cliches, so brace yourselves, this is at times tooth rotting fluff, you can blame everyone who read the first one for not discouraging me from this nonsense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 15:36:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17983862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/authorette/pseuds/authorette
Summary: A companion piece to The Vanishing Glass, from Charity’s POV. AKA Five Times Charity Didn’t Tell The Truth And One Time She Did





	Through The Trap Door

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for all the lovely comments on the first one of these! This world is too fun not to dip into again so here’s a short companion piece from Chariry’s POV. 
> 
> Please feel free to say hi and let me know what you think either in the comments or on tumbler @ authorette44!
> 
> CW: mentions of teenage pregnancy, abuse, war

Through The Trap Door

 

I.

“Charity Dingle!” 

Charity pushes through the crowd of other kids from where she’s been hovering at the back. She turns a little to glance at Vanessa, the girl from the train, with her wide eyes and her big smile and already surrounded by new friends.

Charity’s been hearing about Mudbloods her whole life; how they’re inferior, weak. How they’ve stolen magic from Pure-bloods. 

But Vanessa didn’t seem like that at all. 

She’s always taken her Dad’s teachings with a pinch of salt, but she knows this is how her whole family feels. How the whole circle of families they’ve grown up with feels.

Talking to Vanessa on the train was stupid. And apologising to her…Charity doesn’t apologise for anything, ever.

But there was a moment, standing in the sunlight on platform 9 ¾ that she thought she might have made a friend. Her first proper friend ever, one who’s just hers. 

It felt different.

She stalks over to the stool and grabs the hat, pulling it over her own head.

“My, my, what have we here? Another Dingle, eh?”

Charity closes her eyes. It’s not like she doesn’t know it’ll be Slytherin anyway.

“Yes, indeed, there is a lot of ambition in you. A strong sense of self-preservation. Selfishness too. All very Slytherin indeed.”

Charity grips the stool hard, willing herself to ignore the voice.

“But I see something else too,” the hat says, softly. “Bravery and strength and loyalty to those you love. Could make an excellent Gryffindor as well.”

Charity’s eyes pop open. She imagines her father’s face, opening a letter from her telling him his only daughter has managed to get herself thrown in Gryffindor.

_Isn’t this what you wanted?_ a voice in her head asks. _To be free of the Dingles. To just be yourself?_

Vanessa’s smiling face, thanking her for helping her onto the platform swims in front of her eyes for a second and she swallows hard.

But she can’t. Gryffindor are brave and strong and she’s not any of those things. She never stands up to her father when he hits her, or her uncle when he hurts Cain and Chas, or even the Tates when they pick on other kids and Charity turns her eyes away, feeling a little sick.

“I’m a Slytherin,” she thinks hard. Her stomach churns and she grips the stool even harder. “I don’t want to go anywhere else.” 

The hat sighs in her ear. “You’re braver than you know,” it whispers in her ear. “You’ll find that out some day.”

Then, out into the hall, it shouts “Slytherin!”, and Charity walks past the table of teachers, none of whom seem remotely surprised, towards her family.

She pretends not to pay attention to the sorting, but she can’t help but watch when Vanessa goes up. She’s barely on the bloody stool before she’s been put in Hufflepuff.

“Figures. They always get the losers,” Cain snorts next to her.

But Charity doesn’t reply, watching as Vanessa is welcomed to her house, and then looks over at Charity and gives her a little wave.

She smiles despite herself and looks away.

Almost getting sorted into Gryffindor and finding a Hufflepuff she likes? What’s the world coming to?

 

II.

Charity grabs her broom from under her bed, peering around carefully before slipping out of the dorm in the shadows.

It’s a hand-me-down from the Tates – not like the Dingles can afford last season’s Nimbus model, after all - but Charity’s a good beater and good beaters need fast brooms.

She needs to be more careful. Last weekend when she got back, Zoe kept asking where she’d been, and Charity’s response of ‘the library’ is the least believable cover story she’s ever come up with.

This is madness, this _thing_ she’s doing with Vanessa. It has no future, and it’s dangerous. 

If her family find out, she doesn’t want to think about what they’d do. To her and to Vanessa.

Every Saturday she tells herself she’s going to tell Vanessa it’s the last time. That she can’t practice with her anymore. Each potions class she promises herself she’ll move desk, get a new partner.

“Hi!” Vanessa beams, hovering just outside the entrance hall clutching her old school broom, and Charity knows she’s not going to do it today, yet again. 

She feels herself smiling despite her best efforts and quickly rolls her eyes go cover that she’s pleased to see Vanessa.

“Alright?” she asks casually, like she’s not been watching the clock until it was time for them to meet up all day.

Vanessa immediately starts chattering about this book on dragons she’s reading, and Charity half listens while glancing around to make sure no one is watching them.

They head down to the quidditch pitch and Charity feels some of the tension in her body ease out. She sometimes feels like she’s constantly being watched: by her family, her house, by the teachers. 

The only person who ever sees her as just-Charity and not a cog in the Dingle machine is Vanessa.

“I’m ready to try that rolling on the broom thing,” Vanessa tells her, nodding her head to emphasise. “So I don’t get battered by your bludgers if I ever make it to the first team.”

“If I wanted to hit you, all the rolling in the world wouldn’t save you from my bludgers,” Charity smirks. “But let’s see what you’ve got.”

They practice barely a meter above ground which is good because Vanessa falls off a lot at the start, but to her credit she doesn’t complain beyond wincing, and gets right back on again.

She’s got guts. More guts than half of Gryffindor house put together. Charity knew that the minute Vanessa walked into the potions classroom last year and sat down next to her despite the horror on both her own housemate’s expressions and the looks the Slytherins were giving her.

Every time Charity thinks she’s got her figured out, she does something mad and changes it all again.

“Ok, I think my bum is basically one big bruise now so let’s try something else,” Vanessa says after she falls off again. She managed to stay on the three times before that though so that’s definite progress.

They practice direction changes for a while, but then the light starts fading and Charity knows she should get back before anyone starts looking for her.

“Let’s try the thing, before we go,” Vanessa smiles, and Charity rolls her eyes. 

Every time they’re here, Vanessa tries to launch the quaffle over her shoulder into one of the hoops and she never does it.

But there’s something about the way Vanessa smiles at her, open and with no hint of an agenda that makes Charity want to say yes to whatever she wants, all the time, and so they fly up to the goals. 

Predictably, Vanessa misses twice.

“One more time?” she pleads. “I was so close!”

Charity throws her the ball and watches distractedly as Vanessa shakes her hair over her shoulder where it’s come loose from her ponytail. She’s bathed in the light of the pink sunset and she’s smiling and laughing and Charity feels kind of funny, like she’s eaten something that doesn’t agree with her, but it’s not actually a bad feeling, and it makes her heart thump in her chest and her palms sweaty around the smoothness of her broom.

Vanessa launches the quaffle and it goes wide. “Did I get it?” she asks eagerly.

“Yeah,” Charity lies, her voice sounding a bit rough. “You did.”

She doesn’t know why she lies. She only knows that it makes Vanessa laugh delightedly and hug her once they land, and that the faint whiff of Vanessa’s shampoo hangs around her for the rest of the evening, long after they’ve parted to their respective dorms.

iii.

“Knock knock,” Chas says somewhat ironically, because Charity hasn’t had a door in months. _Doors are for girls who aren’t whores,_ her dad had said when she told him she was pregnant, and she’s had no place to hide away since.

Charity turns her head to look at her cousin, still in her school robes and her Slytherin scarf, but doesn’t say anything, instead resting her hands on her rounded belly. She thinks she can feel something, sometimes. Like a squirming inside her, like the baby is letting her know that it’s there.

“How are you?”

Charity snorts and turns her head up to the ceiling. She’s not got much to say, these days, cooped up in a house with a man who hates her, and with the only visitors being lecherous men or worse, the other ones. The Death Eaters. The ones that talk about killing muggles and who spend hours planning how to overthrow the ministry while Charity is expected to wait on them hand and foot.

“It’s weird, being at school without you,” Chas says.

_So weird you didn’t write me a single letter_ she thinks bitterly, even though she knows that’s not fair. Chas will have been told to ostracise her. They all will.

It still hurts, though, that none of them care enough about her to even try breaking the rules.

Chas bites her lip and glances over her shoulder, checking there’s no one in the corridor behind her, then steps forward and perches on Charity’s small bed.

“There was someone who asked for you,” Chas whispers. “That Hufflepuff girl.”

Charity’s gotten too used to being on her own, to not being around people who actually see her, and she knows that for a moment her expression slips. She can see it in the way Chas’s eyes widen. 

She quickly pulls her face back into a neutral expression but it’s too late; Chas’s face says it all.

“Oh yeah?” Charity asks, trying for casual even as her heart starts thump thump thumping in her chest at the though of Vanessa cornering Chas and asking about her.

“Yeah.” Chas glances at the door again before turning back to her. “Wanted to know where you were and when you were coming back.”

For the first time in months, Charity feels a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. Someone noticed she was gone. Someone cared enough to look for her.

She’s spent the last six months trying not to remember the way she kissed Vanessa in the quidditch changing rooms, or the way Vanessa’s eyes had looked just before she kissed her back. The way Vanessa has cupped her face in her small, soft hands, or the way Charity had felt the nervous, happy, bubbly feeling in her stomach burst and spread across her whole body.

But the memory of it floods her now, and she lets herself indulge briefly, in soft lips and warm hands and her hands in Vanessa’s windswept hair.

“I told her you wouldn’t be back this year,” Chas goes on, watching her reaction carefully, and Charity meets her eyes, trying to hide the turmoil in her chest. The joy of the memory and the anguish of knowing what was coming. What’s still to come. “I could give her a message, if you wanted?” Chas leans closer, whispering. “If she’s important?”

For a brief second, Charity is tempted. She thinks of writing Vanessa a note to explain. Or making Chas tell her something suave and cool, something that would make Vanessa blush and look down in that cute way she has. Something to make sure that she doesn’t forget Charity.

But then a noise carries up the stairs, the sound of the Dingle boys messing about, and she remembers why she didn’t tell Vanessa last year. Why she decided to keep her out of it.

Vanessa is good and pure and kind. A perfect Hufflepuff, and god, Charity never thought she’d think that was a good thing but now she thinks it’s the best. 

Vanessa needs to be kept far away from this. From her family and the Death Eaters, and especially Charity, who attracts trouble like she’s the negative pole on a magnet, sucking every positive thing to her and dragging it down with her.

“She probably just wanted to know why she’s having to actually do work in potions this year,” she says roughly. “So no, got nothing to say to the dirty mudblood.”

The word makes her feel sick, as if she’s said it to Vanessa’s face, but she firms up her jaw and meets Chas’s curious face defiantly.

It’s for the best this way. Whatever was going on between her and Vanessa, it’s well and truly over now, for good.

 

iv.

Charity wakes up to an empty spot next to her and jerks upright.

She’s slept, properly, deeply, for the first time in months, lulled to sleep by Vanessa’s warm presence and her soft hand scrapping gently on the back of her neck.

But now, she’s alone in the semi darkness.

She looks about for Vanessa, and then hears her soft voice in the bathroom. Charity slips softly out of the bed and tiptoes there, where she sees Vanessa rocking Noah, and kissing his little head.

“Shhh,” Vanessa whispers as he snuffles and coos. “Don’t want to wake your mummy, do we? She needs her rest.”

Charity feels her throat close up and she clenches her eyes closed against the threat of tears.

She really thought this might be the thing that breaks them. The baby. Vanessa and her have withstood a lot: teenage pregnancy, an arranged marriage, being on the opposite sides of a war. But she’ll never forget the devastation on Vanessa’s face when she told her she was pregnant with her husband’s baby.

When she came here tonight, she thought it might end. They haven’t seen each other since before the birth, over three months ago, and although Vanessa wrote her a reckless, dangerous note telling her all sorts of things that enemies definitely should not be writing to each other, she was pretty sure that when faced with the physical evidence of Charity’s other life, Vanessa would finally say _enough_.

But when she arrived here earlier, in this hovel of a muggle inn in northern England, clutching Noah to her chest and with her walls up high, Vanessa had greeted them with bright eyes. Had kissed her forehead and taken Noah from her arms, and when their eyes met, and Noah let out a little laugh, she saw Vanessa’s face melt.

“He looks just like you,” she’d said, and blown a raspberry at him, and the whole night they’d been inseparable.

Charity had let exhaustion take over. She’s been so paranoid about closing her eyes, about someone taking her baby like they took Debbie, that she sleeps in a bed with him and doesn’t let him out of her sight.

But she knows he’s safe here, with the only person in the world other than herself that she trusts completely. 

She watches them now, hidden. When Vanessa smiles, she still sees in her the eleven year old girl who didn’t know how to get onto platform 9 ¾. No matter how many battles she fights or people she sees die, Vanessa is always like a patronus, chasing away the dementors, bright and strong and full of hope.

Charity knows she should stay away from her, especially now she has Noah to think about. It’s more dangerous than ever, what they’re doing.

But she’s never been able to do that. Seeing Vanessa is one of the only things she has to look forward to in the world and she’s too selfish to give it up.

She swallows hard and slips back into the bed, allowing herself for a moment to pretend. That there’s no war, no sides. That Noah is _their_ baby and that they’re a proper family. That she’s married to Vanessa and not the boy her dad picked out for her. 

It hurts too much, though, that fantasy, and so she pushes it down and presses her eyes shut as she hears Vanessa pad quietly out of the bathroom. 

“You awake?” Vanessa whispers softly, but she doesn’t respond, pretending to be caught in an endless moment of peace while Vanessa presses her lips gently to her forehead, and lets the soft breathing of her baby and the warmth of her lover lull her to sleep.

v.

The witch at the portkey hands her an envelope, and Charity, still feeling half dazed, grabs it without thinking and shoves it in her pocket. 

Noah is heavy in her arms. He’s grown so much these past few months, and he’s a little shy, glancing up at her with his big eyes wide, as if he’s trying to understand what’s going on with her.

_Good luck with that, babe,_ she thinks. No one else ever has.

Well, no one but one person. 

She’s still shivering, even though the sun is beating on their backs as they move towards the bin and place their hands on the surface.

The cold in Askaban isn’t just physical. It’s the thoughts, that never leave you alone, the horrible, awful thoughts, that steal the rest of the warmth from your body.

Charity doesn’t know exactly how long she was in there. Four months, Vanessa said, plus however long it was waiting for the trial. 

Months of remembering Cain coming into the room, telling her that her baby had died. Of her father ripping Debbie away from her. Of Vanessa’s face in the prefect bathroom when she told her she wasn’t coming back. Of watching muggles be tortured and die, of being hit and groped and touched by Bails and his friends. Of the look in Vanessa’s eyes when she saw Charity’s wedding ring. Of Debbie shouting at her as Cain and the other Dingles were led out of court, sentenced to years in Askaban while she got handed her reduced sentence.

Almost worse than all of that, though, is the memory of what she just did. What she just said to the person who’s been waiting for her out here. Who got her out.

She’s known, all these years, that she’d only cause Vanessa pain in the end. Vanessa had always said it was worth the risk, but then they’d both been assuming that the danger would come from someone else. 

Charity hadn’t considered that it would be her own rotten core that would rip them apart.

There’s a tug at her belly button as the portkey activates and then they’re suddenly in the Leaky Cauldron, and she stumbles a little. Noah’s bottom lip trembles as his ears pop, and she bounces him a little.

She has no idea where to go now. What to do. 

She pushes down the memory of how Vanessa had planned everything out, of somewhere safe for them. 

This is better, she tells herself. She should have probably let Vanessa take Noah, too, to keep him away from her disaster of a life.

But she can’t lose another child. Not another one, not after the way she’s been remembering them being ripped from her for the last few months.

She clutches Noah close and breathes in his soft smell, familiar and yet infused with something a little different, a reminder of the time she’s missed.

“What’re we going to do?” she whispers into his soft, downy baby hair.

Something crinkles in her robe and she remembers the envelope. She pulls it out and gasps as recognises the handwriting at once, from the years they sat next to each other and Vanessa was in charge of documenting their potions progress.

There’s no letter inside. Instead, , there’s galleons. The envelope must be enchanted, so that the woman who gave it to her didn’t know and decide to keep it, because it’s light and flat, but inside there’s at least a hundred galleons. Enough to tide them over for a few months.

Tears fill her eyes, and she swallows hard against them. Even after the way she spoke to her, Vanessa still left this for her. 

Realistically, she knows it’s probably for Noah. She saw the way they looked at each other, the bond they shared, and she’d felt that hot, sick jealousy that she’d always felt when Debbie looked like that at someone who wasn’t her. 

She’s not a good mum, she knows that. Never learned how. But she’ll try. She won’t mess Noah up like she was messed up. She won’t take this gift for granted.

“Come on, little man,” she says softly, heading to the desk. “Let’s get a room.”

“Ness?” he asks softly, and Charity bites her lip to keep her sob inside. She can’t break his heart, not tonight. Not while her own is still in tatters.

“She’s busy at the moment,” she whispers. “But she’ll be back soon, ok babe? She’ll be back really soon.”

vi.

“I actually can’t believe this nonsense,” Charity bitches to the only person still listening to her, even as pulls out her wand and magics the bottles she’s selected onto the tray.

“You know it’s not a competition, right?” Ryan asks, smirking at her from his stool.

“I _know_ that.” If it was, she’d have won long ago anyway. “But I just don’t think the headline is very accurate.”

Ryan rolls his eyes. “Will you let it go?”

Charity glowers in silence for a moment. But then she can’t contain it anymore. “We’ve been together for _years_. We practically _invented_ Slytherin and Hufflepuff relationships.”

“I’m pretty sure you didn’t,” Ryan sighs, but Charity is on a roll now.

“I mean, I’ve been in love with her pretty much since I was eleven. But apparently that doesn’t count for the _Daily Prophet_. It’s all about Chas and Paddy. _The wedding of the decade that shows the war is well and truly over._ ” then she looks up and flushes, because Ryan is looking softly at her, and behind him, Vanessa stands, her arms full of yellow roses, and beams at her with wet eyes.

“All I’m saying is, we’re better,” she mumbles, embarrassed, as Vanessa puts down the flowers and moves towards her. 

“I’ll go and check how they’re getting on outside,” Ryan says quietly, and suddenly she’s alone with Vanessa for the first time in what feels like weeks, ever since all their friends and family descended on the pub for the wedding.

Vanessa turns her face up to her and cups her cheek softly. “What’s wrong?”

Charity opens her mouth but stops when Vanessa shakes her head firmly. 

“And don’t you dare say it’s nothing because I’ve known you for a long time and I know when something’s bothering you. You don’t usually care what the papers have to say.”

Charity sighs and looks up for a moment, because this is what her life is now. No hiding her feelings, no secrets between them. Everything is open and scary and wonderful, all the time.

“It’s just,” she starts, trying to put the knot in her stomach into words. “This wedding. I just…”

“You can tell me anything,” Vanessa says softly. “You know that.”

“I just thought it would be us,” Charity bursts out. “I just thought we’d be first, you know?”

Vanessa freezes. “You want to get married?”

A coldness creeps up Charity’s back at that, and she pulls back a little. “Oh.” She turns away, trying to school her features. 

“Charity,” Vanessa says, sounding a little exasperated. “Look at me.”

She resists for about five seconds, then turns back. “What?”

“Are you ok?”

Charity shrugs. “Fine. You don’t want to get married, that’s fine.”

“I didn’t say that, did I?” Vanessa gives her a small smile. “I just didn’t think you’d want to get married again.”

Now Charity’s confused. “Babe, we live together. We’re raising our kids together. I think it’s pretty safe to say that I’ve got over thinking we’re not serious.”

Vanessa slaps at her shoulder softly. “I know that, silly.” She gives Charity one of those looks that show she thinks she’s being ridiculous but finds it endearing despite herself. “And I love our life. I just figured maybe you wouldn’t want to do the whole marriage thing again.” She looks down briefly. “Because you didn’t get much of a say in it the last time.”

Oh. 

Charity feels her throat close up a little and rolls her eyes at herself. She doesn’t cry around anyone as much as she cries around Vanessa. 

“It’s different with you,” she croaks out, because it’s important to say. It’s important that Vanessa knows that. “I want it, with you.”

“Ok,” Vanessa whispers softly, wetly, and Charity laughs a little when she sees Vanessa is crying too. “Then let’s get married.”

Charity feels the weight in her stomach dissolve, and the giddy happiness she’s come to associate with Vanessa floods her body. She grabs at Vanessa’s yellow robes and tugs her forward, and she gives her a dirty open mouthed kiss that has Vanessa gasping and panting into her mouth when they part.

“Did you mean it?” Vanessa whispers, pressing their foreheads together. “What you said to Ryan. That you’ve loved me since we were eleven?”

Charity looks down, at the woman who’s never taken no for an answer, who’s fought for her and lied for her and chased her and loved her. “Course I did,” she whispers. “Didn’t give me much choice in the matter, did you?”

“Can you guys come and help with the marquee?” Debbie shouts from outside and Charity drops a last kiss on Vanessa’s forehead. 

“Let’s go,” she says softly, and Vanessa nods.

“You alright?” Vanessa asks, stopping her just before the door, and Charity nods, smiling down at the woman she loves.

“Best I’ve ever been,” she replies. And she means it.


End file.
